Hardly any contemporary director works in their own realms as the Romanian Radu Jude. With the coming-of-age film “The Happiest Girl in the World” or historical fabrics such as “Aferim!” Had he started his career – classic narrative cinema, stylistically remarkable, but still comparatively conventional. Then, however, Jew stripped the corset of the new Romanian cinema known for his naturalism and went new, experimental, almost anarchist paths.
But even if you appreciate his Berlinale winning film “Bad Luck Banging Or Loony Porn”, you could reach limits given Judes's new film. Although it seems to be “Dracula”, it seems to be simple and uncomplicated, but has everything and nothing to do with the famous and tens of films. In an exuberant, often fascinating, as often tiring excess, Jew plays with motifs of the canonical bloodsucker novel by Bram Stoker, mixed with pop cultural references, vulgar humor and emphasizes bad AI images. Fans of Jude's work will be impressed-who is only remotely a “Dracula” film in the style of Robert Eggers' “Nosferatu-the Untote” or the version of Luc Besson, which was also published this year, will be more than irritated …
Radu Judes “Dracula” is the back appropriation, anarchic chaos and postmodern meta play-but certainly no further classic film adaptation of the fabric!
A nameless director (Adonis Tanta) sits alone in his chamber and speaks to a AI installed on a tablet. He has the order to make a commercial “Dracula” film-and thus a fabric that international directors have been filming in new variants for around a hundred years, finally to tell from a Romanian, from Transylvanic perspective. Accordingly, he feeds the AI with prompts, which then spits out all sorts of variants of the fabric, which sometimes have more, sometimes nothing in common with the story of the unhappy undead.
At the same time, an amateur performance of “Dracula” takes place in Cluj (the capital of the Transssslylvania region), in which a couple (Oana Maria Maria Zaharia and Gabriel Spahiu), which is also a sexually charged, will be presented in Cluj, but soon performs a sexually charged version, but soon from a mobile-up mobile nocturnal streets of the city are hunted …
170 minutes of bare chaos
If this sounds more like the mob from “Frankenstein”, it is not wrong- Radu Jew quotes himself across the cinema and art history in the 170 minutes of his completely chaotic, in the best sense, Donald Trump, there Martin Heidegger, does not shy away from amazingly romantic or striking moments. And somehow practically everything in this potpourri actually attributes to the legend of Dracula.
Sometimes very specific when it comes to the importance of the undead for the Romanian tourism industry-including a planned but not completed Dracula Park (including Judes Film's working title). Sometimes even more subtle when there is talk of a sanatorium in the Romania of the 1970s, which was still dominated by dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu, wealthy and sometimes prominent westerners – among them actually Charlie Chaplin! – made rejuvenation cures. And what is the Dracula myth other than the desire for eternal youth …
Only one of many absurd “Dracula” variants that a helpless director can spit out by a AI.
In over a dozen chapters, Radu Jew rages and, last but not least, experiment with the possibilities, dangers and absurdities of AI and Deepfakes. To make a “right” “Dracula” film would hardly be possible in the rather precarious Romanian film industry, so Jew uses artificial intelligence for all elaborate scenes-but emphasizes badly.
Dracula rarely seemed more ridiculous than here, with which Jew in the end also questioned Hollywood's slope to IP films, sequels and remakes. The bloodthirsty the pictures are, the silly they look through their emphasized artificiality. Not every idea is convincing, some things seem so abstruse that footnotes written by Jew would probably need to make the covers understandable. But for friends of his experimental cinemas that moving completely free of narrative conventions, “Dracula” also works as a clever, uncepted, referring game.
Conclusion: Only connoisseurs and fans of the cinematic cosmos Radu Judes can be recommended to this film, which is invitingly called “Dracula”, but certainly represents the most absurd “film adaptation” of the timeless substance. Instead of turning another minimally different variant, Radu Jude opens a postmodern miracle bag full of references and references, which sometimes only work in his head, but often circle and deconstruct the Dracula myth in a clever way.